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A lost princess?

Alistair did not find it as difficult to believe as perhaps he ought.

His heart still ached for the girl she had been, deprived of her family, fighting to keep even her name a secret, because it was one of the few things she had known to be truly and only hers. But now all of that had changed.

She wasn’t lost anymore.

He longed to wrap his arms around her, just as he had done earlier that night. But the very strength of his longing was a warning.

These revelations were for her alone. He’d already heard more than he should.

“Come,” he said to the others, careful not to look at her. “I think we can agree that Herr Schenk presents no danger. We should leave them to work through the details of translating Miss—” A series of surnames swirled in his head, none of them real or right. Changing course, he finished lamely, “Uh, this private family matter.”

He picked up a sturdy brass candelabra, strode toward the doors that divided the drawing room from the library, and threw them open. “You’ll find paper, pens, whatever you might need in here.” He paused to slide one slender volume on German history from the shelf, intending to offer it to his sister, and then at the last minute, tucked it into his pocket instead. “Danny, help our aunt to bed. She must be exhausted. Come, Forster. I’ll have a servant show you to your room.”

Aunt Josephine sputtered but went when Danny touched her arm. Forster hesitated.

As if to reassure both men of his honor, Schenk laid his arm across his chest in the manner of one taking an oath and bowed, clicking his heels together as he did so.

Alistair bowed in turn and left without another word.

After handing Forster off to a somewhat bewildered housemaid, Alistair’s restless feet took him not toward his own bed, or even back to the library, but in the direction of the west wing. Before he had even made a conscious choice of destination, he found himself in the studio.

The walls still seemed to echo with their conversation of earlier that night.

You are not a selfish man.

Oh, but he was. How he had wanted to be able to give her all the things she had never had. But of course what she’d really wanted, really needed, was exactly what some other man was giving her now: a history. And a future. Far from here, and from him.

Slowly, he walked around the room. He’d always hated this place and everything it represented. But now, tangled up in those memories of his father and his past were memories of her. Of the art she had made. Of the passion they had shared.

On the table, he found the drawing of him reclining nude on the chaise. He wanted to touch the flame of the candle to it, to turn it to ash, but he made himself study it instead.

This one is just for me, she had told him as she’d sketched it.

Then she had left the picture behind.

This is how I see you, she had said earlier tonight.

Stripped bare. Dark eyes that should have been soft and sated but instead burned with lust. As if, in spite of having had her just moments earlier, he’d never needed her more.

She had never needed him less.

Snatching it from the table, he strode from the room. He carried the light with him, but the darkness followed. When he shut the door between the church and the cloisters and snapped the iron padlock, it clanged with awful finality.

As if summoned by Harriet’s third noisy yawn in as many minutes, Danielle and Edwina appeared in the doorway of the library. “It’s time for bed,” Danielle announced.

Constantia glanced around the room and squinted at the clock on the mantel but couldn’t make it out. How many hours had it taken for her and Harriet and Herr Schenk—together with the aid of pen and paper, a great deal of patience, and Harriet’s German primer—to sort out a reasonably comprehensible recounting of Constantia’s family history?

In addition to providing Harriet with a lengthy written history of the Friedensfeld dynasty, he had also explained in greater detail first how he had tracked Constantia to and around London, frequently losing sight of her for weeks or months at a time and never getting close enough to introduce himself, and then how he had followed her from London to Rylemoor. Though that part of the story did not in fact involve chasing her from a London alleyway nor breaking chairs in a roadside pub—Constantia had felt a twinge of guilt at the realization her fearful imagination had turned every chance event against him—it had nonetheless been a thrilling tale. Quite by happenstance, he had learned of an accident involving a young woman matching her description and had sought out the physician who had treated her injuries. Once he had managed to ascertain Lord Ryland’s identity and whereabouts, he had embarked upon the difficult journey across the countryside on foot, having long since spent every penny he’d been given for his search. He had arrived in the vicinity of Rylemoor only the day before, encountered Edwina, and had returned tonight intending to plead his case to the earl. But, spying Constantia dressed for travel and carrying her valise, he had attempted to follow her instead, then lost his way in the darkness amid the cavernous abbey ruins. She trembled to think that if she had once again eluded him, or if Alistair had not checked his swing, she might never have learned the truth.

“Mr. Schenk must be allowed to retire,” Edwina gently insisted. Certainly, he had earned his rest. Without waiting for Harriet to translate her sister’s words, he rose and followed Edwina gratefully out.

Seeing that her previous statement had not yet produced the desired result, Danielle folded her arms across her chest and spoke more sternly: “Harry. Bed.”

Harriet rose with a halfhearted protest. “This will all still be here in the morning,” Constantia assured her, lifting her head from what she had been reading long enough to cast a glance over the papers spread across the table.

Although truth be told, even she wasn’t quite sure she believed it. She could not entirely shake the feeling that if she allowed herself to fall asleep, she would wake to discover this had been a dream.

“You as well,” Danielle said, when Constantia did not stand and join them. “I’m not leaving you hear to brood over this affair all night.”

Brood? Was that what she’d been doing? It was, well, more than overwhelming to try to take it all in. And a good deal of the story made her sorrowful in ways she hadn’t expected.

But most of all, she was not sure how to begin to reconcile the woman shaped by the vicissitudes of a hard life, a woman whose experiences had formed a whole suit of rather spiky armor around her, with the woman Herr Schenk claimed she really was.

Out of habit, she shuffled the papers and books into neater stacks, not for the first time wishing her thoughts were so easy to compose. Eventually, though, she got to her feet and snuffed the last brace of candles from the dozens that had been lit at the start of the evening.

“Come on,” Danielle said. “I’ll show you to your room.”

It took a moment for those words to sink in. “My...room?” She was tired, yes, and a bit befuddled. But she was reasonably sure that after more than a fortnight at Rylemoor, she could find her way to the schoolroom.

“Your new room,” Danielle clarified. “Edwina feels it would be a shocking dereliction of her duty as hostess to allow a princess to continue sleeping in that broom cupboard upstairs.” There was something slightly wry in her voice. Constantia opened her mouth to protest, but when it turned into a yawn instead, she realized arguing would be futile and followed Danielle out.

Harriet was already several paces ahead of them, and Constantia was surprised when Danielle led her in the same direction, toward the east wing. But she supposed it was to be expected that the guest chambers would be placed near the family apartments, in the part of the house that had been best maintained over the years. And after all, now she was no longer masquerading as a teacher; she was a guest.

Only a guest.

“I have not had an opportunity to praise your portrait of my brother,” Danielle said as they ascended the stairs.

Constantia nearly stumbled. The unveiling of that picture seemed to belong to another lifetime. “You were pleased, then?”

They had reached the landing, and Danielle paused, appearing to have to consider her answer. “It is an exceptional likeness, very much the man I know my brother to be. Charming, kind, generous to a fault.” Even Constantia, who had a great deal of confidence in her abilities, doubted she had conveyed so much with brushes and paint. “But I will confess,” Danielle went on, “I cannot find pleasure in anything I am sure will bring him misery.”

“Misery?” Constantia echoed.

“Marriage to a stranger, some merchant’s daughter he does not love—what else would you call it? That is what your portrait will ensure.” She took a few steps down the corridor and paused again. “But of course, you did what you were paid to do. If my sisters and I have convinced ourselves that you care too much for our brother to help seal his fate, well...I suppose we have only ourselves to blame. We did not know when all this began that you are the infamous Miss C.”

The words stung, though she knew the lashing was deserved. “I certainly do not wish to see your brother miserable,” she insisted. “But I did not consider myself as having the authority, the right, to go against what both he and your aunt seemed to think best. Difficult situations are often difficult to remedy—”

“He cares for you, you know.” Danielle turned and searched her face, probing for a reaction to those words. “A great deal.”

“And I—” she began, then broke off with a blush.

Care did not begin to do justice to her feelings for Alistair.

Oh, if only he hadn’t left.

Danielle stopped before a door and handed her the candle. “I’m just here,” she said, and Constantia could have sworn there was a smile about her lips as she added, “You’re the last door on the right.”

She took the remaining steps down the corridor slowly, her mind too busy sorting through the events of the last hours to also propel her feet. So much had changed— everything , one was tempted to say. But she wasn’t sure she ought to go that far until she’d had a chance to tell Alistair all that she’d learned and ask him—

The last door on the right swung open to reveal a large chamber with a heavy four-poster bed. It also revealed the subject of her thoughts, clad in a dressing gown and sitting in a leather wingback chair before a fire blazing on the hearth, a book propped open on his knee.

She was torn between warring instincts: to acknowledge her mistake and withdraw from a chamber that obviously belonged to the Earl of Ryland, or to draw closer to the warmth and coziness of the fire—and to him. “Oh. I’m sorry for intruding,” she said, frozen in indecision on the threshold. “I must have misunderstood Lady Danielle’s directions.”

“Danny sent you to my door?” He had risen and turned toward the firelight so that she could watch amusement play about his lips, a half smile very like the one she had just seen on his sister’s face. “Then I doubt there was any mistake.”

“You can’t mean—? Surely she wouldn’t—”

He shrugged. “I did warn you that my sisters were mischief-makers. Long before the monthly encouragement of Mrs. Goode.”

Constantia glanced over her shoulder, into the empty corridor, and asked in a low voice, “You don’t think she, er, suspects ?”

“That we...? No. None of them believes their dour elder brother capable of courting scandal in quite such a dramatic fashion.”

And that, she supposed, was partly her handiwork too.

“Why did you leave?” she asked, standing with one hand on the door, torn over what to do. She thought of how he’d wrapped her in his arms earlier that evening, how he’d attacked a much bigger man in the darkness just to keep her safe. She wanted him by her side now. Forever.

But what he wanted mattered too.

“I could ask you the same,” he replied, laying aside his book and coming closer. “Though I suppose I already had your answer, didn’t I? Then let us say I suspected you would prefer to grapple with the implications of Schenk’s story on your own terms, and that there might be aspects of your history you would not wish others to know.”

“But Lady Harriet has heard—”

“I cannot say the same for all my sisters, but Harry is no gossip.”

She believed it. “And if I wish for you to know everything Herr Schenk told me?”

“Then you may tell me,” he said, the ghost of hesitation in his voice.

“Tonight?”

His eyes narrowed slightly, the tiniest hint of a wall going up between him and a truth he was obviously reluctant to hear. “Just as you wish.”